EA responds to FOX Mass Effect fiasco

In a letter sent from Electronic Arts' Jeff Brown to FOX News, EA …

Our coverage of the ill-informed FOX News story about Mass Effect drew plenty of response from readers. In addition to personal responses, corporate responses are beginning to trickle in, too. Electronic Arts, now the owners of BioWare, sent a letter to FOX News to clarify the many errors present in their segment.

Kotaku received a copy of the letter, penned by vice president of communications at EA, Jeff Brown, and it's pretty strongly worded. Like the Geoff Keighley case before it, many of the same arguments regarding the ESRB rating and the actual content were invoked. The letter opens with a statement of the desire to "set the record straight on a number of errors and misstatements which incorrectly characterize the story and character interactions in Mass Effect" before breaking down the various inaccuracies of the story bit by bit and offering appropriate criticism for each. The letter concludes:

The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.

Do you watch the Fox Network? Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen The OC? Do you think the sexual situations in Mass Effect are any more graphic than scenes routinely aired on those shows? Do you honestly believe that young people have more exposure to Mass Effect than to those prime time shows?

This isn't a legal threat; it's an appeal to your sense of fairness. We're asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect.